/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23409549]

You ever notice how zoomers often come into threads or other online spaces (not necessarily this board, although sometimes) just to essentially brag about how much they hate reading even though all they do all day is post and read pointless stuff on social media.
It's like they'll happily read 100 separate social media posts that amount to not much but if you put the exact same amount of words into one essay with an actual point it becomes insurmountable. It's like if something is even one line too long (AKA 2 lines) their eyes glaze over and they zone out. It's not about the amount to be read it's just about how the reading is abstracted and "spaced out".

I feel this is very emblematic of general reading habits today and how people view reading. It's like people want to be plugged into this chaotic endless stream of collective consciousness rather than the structured lucid consciousness of one individual.
If I made this very post in most places I know most people would just ignore it. Just noticing things.

[Anonymous No.23409551]

>>23409549
If you can't condense your book into a tweet then you're a bad writer.

[Anonymous No.23409555]

>>23409551
I apologize I complained about demoralizationposts 5 minutes ago and then I went and made one, I will give myself ten lashes

[Anonymous No.23409582]

I think they're kind of right though. Sum up your point. Be concise.
The days of waffling on pointlessly just to fill pages in a book should maybe stay in the past where they belong.
This is why I don't read philosophy. You can literally just find someone else who summed up the points in a format which is quicker to consume, and also clearer to understand.

[Anonymous No.23409594]

>>23409549
I have the same problem on a larger scale.
I would rather read ten books than solve a few chapters of math problems. I have no problem sacrificing time and effort in a superficial passive way, but I'm avoiding depth, avoiding commitment to holding the same ideas in my head for hours.

[Anonymous No.23409596]

>>23409582
this. i read the wikipedia page on the bible and i'm convinced i understand it better than any christcuck that read it.

[Anonymous No.23409599]

Holy shit dude! You're soooooo fucking intelligent! I am *VERY* interested in what you have to say. You should start a podcast, bro! You'd be bigger than Joe Rogan.

[Anonymous No.23409601]

I’m not sure and to be honest I only read the first half of your post but I’ve considered the same thing only in terms of posting. I.e. tons of people are writers now but what they write is posts

[Anonymous No.23409602]

>>23409599
Podcasts are good, actually.

[Anonymous No.23409611]

>>23409602
Podcasts are quite chudly though

[Anonymous No.23409614]

Now that I’ve read the entirety of OP I would add that zoomers seem to be able to concentrate on a full book if it’s full of smut, which I don’t have a problem with smut per se, but I think when people refer to zoomers reading books they’re talking about books that exist for girls to fap to. And that’s kinda weird

[Anonymous No.23409615]

>>23409582
A good writer doesn't waste any words sure.
But at a certain point any complex idea needs a bare minimum amount of writing to explain, examine, and draw conclusions. And good writing is just a sequence of complex ideas that create a sort of pattern or web which taken all together create what you might call "meaning" or "substance".
And look all I can say is that it's definitely more than 140 characters.

[Anonymous No.23409648]

>>23409549
It's because zoomers get all of their information from video essays, podcasts, movies, tv shows, etc etc. They may have been forced to read a book when they were younger but the vast majority do not maintain that habit. So, when they see a bunch of words that look suspiciously book-length (keep in mind, that usually means anything over 100 words) they might make an attempt to digest it or they'll ignore it. When reading, zoomers don't want exposition or build up or setting development, they want instant action and gratification. They'll happily sit through Ru Paul's Drag Race or Euphoria because it's a visual medium but asking them to do any thinking or imagining on their own is like a death sentence.

[Anonymous No.23409687]

>>23409582
>Sum up your point. Be concise.
Bold you to assume any idea worth expressing is concise

[Anonymous No.23409702]

>>23409648
>So, when they see a bunch of words that look suspiciously book-length (keep in mind, that usually means anything over 100 words) they might make an attempt to digest it or they'll ignore it. When reading, zoomers don't want exposition or build up or setting development, they want instant action and gratification.
I kind of wonder, is this because zoomers hate reading or because they're grown up on the internet and a lot of long form internet writing that they've seen just isn't worth reading. I'd hazard a guess that 99% of internet writing from the last 10 years was either an empty exercise to advance the writer's career or something someone paid the writer for. In the former case, the content is empty, in the latter, the form is.

[Anonymous No.23409705]

>>23409687
They are.

[Anonymous No.23409706]

The really dangerous trend to me is that more and more people are just openly proud of being dumb. Then they lack the self awareness to see this is what's happening. And this sentiment gets reinforced so easily in the echo chambers of the internet.

And then the counterpart is this >>23409599
Along with praising dumbness, if someone is perceived as being even slightly analytical, dogpile shame instead.

[Anonymous No.23409708]

Zoomers are going to be alright, I know they can be annoying but I think many of them will turn out fine. Gen Alpha is the generation I'm concerned about, the generation who have been given iPads from the moment they were born.

[Anonymous No.23409714]

>>23409708
Zoomers think ChatGPT is a reliable question answering system, as if it were an interactive search engine. They are cognitively fucked.

[Anonymous No.23409733]

This phenomenon is affecting everyone in the modern world as modern communication technology is warps everyone's attention span and fries their dopamine receptors. Framing it as a generation war issue is counterproductive.

[Anonymous No.23409735]

>>23409714
tbf a lot of older people never understood how to Google either so I'm not sure that's an important metric.

[Anonymous No.23409742]

>>23409714
Every generation is composed of primarily stupid people and people of average intelligence. More often than not, it's that small percentage of intelligent people in each generation who have any kind of impact on the arts and the world as a whole. I can almost guarantee that if ChatGPT was around in the 60s tons of boomers would be using it to coast through school. I know it's easy to generalize an entire generation but be careful of falling into the same trap that's been ensnaring older people since the dawn of civilization.

[Anonymous No.23409745]

>>23409705
You're saying be a quote addict basically. Being a quote addict is like one step above being addicted to social media posts. I'm sure it seems so much better to you but it's not. Because quotes are generally taken out of the context of a bigger multifaceted picture the writer is trying to paint. You're taking these big ideas and putting them into a vacuum where they lose some of the power from their surrounding environment.

[Anonymous No.23409747]

I guess as a zoomer I tend to find it uncomfortable
being alone with my own thoughts for too long. Like yes, reading hundreds of posts and comments on the internet could've been used to actually read books. But the internet is one giant collective consciousness and it's stimulating to have all of these thoughts reflected back at you. But then, I end up feeling bad because I wasted so much precious and valuable time that I could've used to better my life by scratching an itch. None of these words ultimately mean anything to me and I don't even retain most of it yet, I prioritize it over my actual life. I can sit and read a book as my attention span isn't that fried but being alone with my thoughts and ruminating too much leaves me feeling anxious and dreadful so I run back to the internet to escape and numb by brain. If I had an extroverted and social life I would've just ran towards that to escape from whatever I'm running from. Maybe I should just meditate and be alone with my thoughts but the internet has such a chokehold on me. I guess it's just internet addiction but I wonder if existential dread is the root cause of this.

[Anonymous No.23409754]

>>23409705
>>23409596

>How to be a good salesman:
>Be charismatic.

OMG SO HECKIN HELPFUL!! READERS BTFO

[Anonymous No.23409774]

>>23409549
why do you think modern writers write like this?

[Anonymous No.23409775]

>>23409582
The problem with this mindset is you’ll never truly understand anything. To really understand you must know the progression, you need to know the bedrock of sorts, you need to be able to grab the arguments themselves and be able to think about them on your own. Also, the biggest problem is that since you never learn how to actually parse arguments you’ll probably just blindly accept bullshit you’re bias towards because you don’t know better. You’ll never be able to actually form your own rebuttals or think your way out of anything, pretty much the last man.

[Anonymous No.23409783]

>>23409549
I dont think this is unique to zoomers, or even to this time period. People think anti-intellectualism has gotten worse, and people have become more stupid, but I do not know if that is true. There have always been people who don't like reading or thinking very deeply, and also many people who like the aesthetic of being intellectual and pretend to read, or do actually read a lot but just to prove how much they can read. Histories are written by elites and the elite set the intellectual trends, so histories are usually the history according to a small group of people. If you went to the peak of the Renaissance, you'd still be surrounded by idiots who would scoff at you if you something down, or articulated anything outside of their comfortability threshold. If you were living in America's intellectual flourishing period, the 20s-50s that everyone nostalgiazes as this time where people read more and were more intelligent, you'd find a lot of people who read sparingly, who's intellect was entirely directed at performing their jobs, and who were very averse to "whacky ideas." And you'd also find rural people who don't read anything but the Bible and think you're possessed by a demon for trying to get them to read other books, for doing it yourself.
The form may be different with today, like you alluded to with social media postings, but I don't know that the cause has changed all that much.

[Anonymous No.23409789]

>>23409783
*if you wrote something down

[Anonymous No.23409793]

>>23409602
podcasts are a terrible format for any serious information

[Anonymous No.23409801]

>>23409745
No, I'm saying make your point, instead of padding.

[Anonymous No.23409864]

>>23409702
to be fair, most books were like that too
we just don't remember since the intentional act of sitting down to read a book inherently filters out a lot of junk
i think the internet lacks intentionality in usage, which makes it too easy to find garbage reading, which sours their opinion on reading as a whole

[Anonymous No.23410003]

>Brevity is the soul of wit

Actually that's too long, how about

>Brevity = Wit

or better

>BreviWit

[Anonymous No.23410009]

>>23410003
i prefer BrevyWevy

[Anonymous No.23410016]

>>23410003
If they are the same it is redundant to say one is one.
So just say Brevity.

[Anonymous No.23410027]

>>23410016
Cut.

[Anonymous No.23410048]

>>23410003
>Is Brevity the Soul of Wit?: A thesis, by Farty Windbag
>500 pages to answer the question

[Anonymous No.23410198]

>>23409706
It would be one thing if they were proud of being dumb and owned it, or adopted the Socratic attitude of "I know that I know nothing". The problem is that they still feel compelled to have opinions on shit they know positively nothing about and are intolerant of those who might disagree. Don't have to specify a single issue here, it could apply to anything since zoomers became old enough to drink.

[Anonymous No.23410205]

>>23409549
It boils down to the fact that zoomers as a generation are retarded. The ones who browse 4chan think they are smart for discovering the secret hacker place, but in reality they are only "smart" compared to their peers, who are retarded. It's a case of big fish in a small tank.

[Anonymous No.23410379]

>>23409582
>>23409596
>>23409615
There is a point beyond which the simplification of a text implies losing definition on what you are reading. Some things are complex and need to be explained in complex ways.
Generally speaking, also, the idea that most content can be presented in a "simple" and "concise" way does not recognize the fact that content is what drives the form of a text and not the other way around. There are contents that need to be express clearly and concisely, others that benefit from other forms of expressions that go from mathematical language to essay forms to verses to narrative to totally unclear stuff like Donna Haraway's "speculative fabulation". It is limiting for your mind to assume that one way of expressing yourself is "correct" or more functional - and learning how to read means precisely to be able to acknowledge and navigate how different linguistic practices express different contents.

[Anonymous No.23410406]

>>23410379
based. Anyone who thinks concision is the only way literature should be doesn't appreciate the art form.

[Anonymous No.23410407]

>>23409582
tl;dr

[Anonymous No.23410443]

>>23409551
The opposite is true. If you CAN condense your book into a 140 character tweet, what's the point of reading your book?

[Anonymous No.23410463]

>>23410443
To condition an intuition about the subject from the perspective presented by the piece of art. Music and theatre are the most effective tools both to control people maliciously or induct them into a different way of thinking voluntarily.

[Anonymous No.23410466]

>>23409754
Read how to win friends and influence people and tell me that the book cannot be sufficiently explained in a third of the length.
I get some people are slow, but I personally don't need a detailed explanation and 3 separate examples on things as basic as how smiling, or remembering names are things people like.
Most nonfiction books I can understand perfectly by reading the glossary and maybe reading the first sentence of each chapter, which is what I would do if I were to read nonfiction.
I would be way more receptive to nonfiction if the majority of it didnt (1) overexplain basic ideas to extreme tedium or (2) overcomplicate basic ideas, obscuring them behind needless artificial jargon to obscure the point and feign intelligence.
I think both of those types of nonfiction are for dumb people.

[Anonymous No.23410475]

>>23409549
tl;dr

[Anonymous No.23410561]

>>23410466
People need a yappathon because otherwise they wont get the time necessary in for a personality change
If i told u "good thing is positive" that would be something u agree with, if i told u the same thing in a ten hour context u would never forget it
Thing is people know what they choose but they read it to hope it infects them and leaves a mark

[Anonymous No.23410566]

>>23409745
ever listened to Modern Wisdom? It's really funny how he pulls up a random quote every ten minutes during podcast. Well it's less funny than it is cringe

[Anonymous No.23410580]

>>23409549
>you ever notice zoomers suck
Yes

[Anonymous No.23410595]

>>23409582
>===> just to fill pages in a book <===
This is the "tell". The red flag that gives away the zoomer's entire corrupted worldview. They view EVERYTHING through a lens of oppression or unfairness/cheating. To them, a book isn't long, it's "padded out to make me waste money". A video game isn't hard, it's "needlessly difficult to make me buy a strategy guide". I could go on and on but the pattern becomes self-evident. They're tainted deep the core by ideological principles they aren't consciously aware of, let alone understand, and because the rest of their education has been woefully lacking they're incapable of acting as anything other than unthinking belligerent soldier ants.

[Anonymous No.23410604]

>>23410561
Self help doesn't work even with the yappathon. There's a reason why self help is such a huge industry. If one self help book could fix your life then you wouldn't need a second one and there would be no industry.
I'd unironically rather hear very powerful symbolic schizo babble than hear data oriented, authority worshipping nu-males tell me about how I'm scientifically 72% more likely to receive X if I do Y. The nu-male info dump babble doesn't work even for its biggest consumers.
Tell me how it is my birth right to live by the good way and how the spirits above will smile down on me for doing good thing.
(I can do this myself and I have no need for self help or nonfiction, I'm just illustrating that the approach nonfiction writers take isn't effective)

[Anonymous No.23410614]

>>23409549
I believe it primarily has to do with education itself. Public and private schools are so good at tuning out and snuffing out the spark of curiosity in children that I guess subconsciously we associate learning with tedious drills like homework and other barbaric rituals in the school curriculum. Hence if you get someone to read and they know it requires some level of thinking, people reactively recoil thinking it's 'another homework assignment'
It's honestly ingenious and depraved

[Anonymous No.23410617]

>>23409793
This. Reading from the primary texts are key, reading them with intent. Sadly these days, this is how to filter people.

[Anonymous No.23410633]

>>23410604
>nu male
Kek. Please describe this nu male

[Anonymous No.23410638]

>>23410633
Any "science" minded, "data" minded or industry minded person post 1910s.

[Anonymous No.23410749]

>>23410638
According to the data all those correlate with high IQ and success in life.
They also correlate with lack of creative output and ~300% more dick sucking.

[Anonymous No.23410780]

>>23410749
>According to the data all those correlate with high IQ and success in life.
That probably is true but IQ =/= reason. These people fixate on "data" don't know how to make accurate conclusions from their data and are unable to comprehend the minutiae that makes something whole.

[Anonymous No.23410870]

>>23410638
Kek I agree with you but why post 1910 specifically, I have it at 1890.

[Anonymous No.23410885]

>>23410780
This. People use statistics and selectively use data that confers on their worldview
'People who identify as part of the LGBT tend to have higher IQs' which is already a shaky observation to begin with but the conclusion is more due to the fact that universities are more accepting and propagate left leaning ideologies.

[Anonymous No.23410890]

>>23409783
>didn't read anything but the bible
Holy based

[Anonymous No.23411309]

>>23409549
No, I dont, as this website is the only "social media" I still use. The modern cultural landscape is foreign to me, and I couldn't be happier.

[Anonymous No.23411419]

The future is looking bleak.

[Anonymous No.23411483]

>>23409774
Why is this bad? Its narratively heavy but not any different from novels steeped in plotless drama.

[Anonymous No.23411488]

>Podcasts are good, actually.

[Anonymous No.23411501]

>>23411488
>1488

[Anonymous No.23411515]

>>23410466
>Read how to win friends and influence people and tell me that the book cannot be sufficiently explained in a third of the length.
So? You're not wrong but even if I grant you that you'd still have to read more pages than what most zoomers are capable of reading. You could summarize the whole of How to Win Friends as "be social", which would be objectively correct. How much more concise can you get than that? If you take your assumption to its logical conclusion it's literally
>just be [insert positive adjective] bro!

I haven't read much books about sales but Jordan Belfort's book on it is probably one of the single biggest helpers I had in being one of the top earners in a sales job. The book goes into excruciating detail of every nuance in a sale: tonality, body language, scripts, objections, etc. Cutting out all that (making it a third of its length) would take away from all the little caveats that would be thrown your way in a sales situation and thus would make it objectively inferior. Could it be cut down? Sure. But what you're arguing for is editing, more than anything. You'd still have to read a fair amount that most zoomers aren't willing/capable to do IF you want something that is worth your time in actually helping you become better or more well informed

[Anonymous No.23411547]

>>23409549
Our culture is so fragmented and without a common foundation upon which people can have serious and in depth discussions. We cannot even agree on what a man or a woman actually even is. If this is the case, and no amount of logic or rhetoric will chance anybody’s position on the matter, how could anything written in a 500 page book be relevant? How can we discuss details and nuance when the very basics are disagreed upon? Polemics is the only virtuous mode of discourse because, when nobody can be expected to converse in good faith, the only thing that matters is “are you on my side or the other?”

[Mark Fisher No.23411548]

>>23409549
>>23409551
>>23409582
>>23409615
>>23409648
>Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many - and these are A-level students mind you - will protest that they can't do it. The most frequent complaint teachers hear is that it's boring. It is not so much the content of the written Material that is at issue here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be 'boring'. What we are facing here is not just time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate 'New Flesh' that is 'too wired to concentrate' and the confining, concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored simply means to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, YouTube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way that they want a hamburger; they fail to grasp - and the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehension - that the indigestibility, the difficulty is Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.23412221]

>>23409549
When you only read 100 character tweets (if even that much) for years on end, your brain will inevitably fry into a dopamine starved black hole. I speak from experience, btw, I'm not even saying this to feel superior. I've found the most unproductive moments in my life are those where I use social media and do little reading, even before I really even know what "dopamine" as a concept was. in order to get out of dopamine junkie mode you need to put in the work to get rid of old addictive habits